When Ryan Nicodemus packed up his 2,000-square-foot condo — including every piece of furniture, kitchen gadget and bathroom toiletries — he realized it was an odd thing to do since he wasn’t moving.
“I just (left unpacked) the things that I needed to use,” says Nicodemus. “After 21 days, 80 percent of my stuff was still packed.”
This realization prompted him to officially join his childhood friend Joshua Millburn in living a “minimalist” lifestyle, which the pair equate to less stuff in exchange for a more meaningful life. The duo are now known as the Minimalists.
For those who want to learn more about living with less, Nicodemus and Millburn have published the book “Everything That Remains.” It expands on their first book, “Live a Meaningful Life,” which offers tips, techniques and a basic recipe for introducing the minimalist concept into any life or lifestyle.
“We had it all,” Nicodemus says, “six-figure income, new cars, big homes, all the trappings of what people would consider necessary to be successful, but we weren’t happy.”
Nicodemus was working 70- and 80-hour weeks, always striving to get ahead. He had accumulated a pile of debt.
“I kept buying things thinking that would make me happy,” he says. “I couldn’t wear all the clothes I had; so many of them even still had the tags on, and still I kept buying more. I had probably more than $5,000 worth of shoes I would never wear.”
For Millburn, the turning point came in 2010 when his mother passed away and his marriage ended.
“I went to my mother’s house to pack up all her stuff. She wasn’t a hoarder, but she had a lot of stuff just from so many years of living,” Millburn says. “I rented the biggest storage unit I could and the biggest truck that I could.
“When I was going through her things I found these four boxes under her bed labeled: ‘one,’ ‘two,’ ‘three’ and ‘four.’ I opened them. Inside were my school papers from grades one, two, three and four. I looked at them and realized I was doing the same thing to her stuff, just in a bigger box.”
Instead of storage units and moving trucks, Millburn held an estate sale, gave everything that didn’t sell to charity and donated the sale proceeds to causes his mother believed in.
“My memories weren’t in those things; they were inside me,” he says. “Now her things would be enjoyed by people who could really use them, and the money went to help those in need. Everybody wins.”
Millburn returned home and started the same process with his own life.
“Everything I do now is more deliberate, more meaningful,” he says. “This lifestyle allows us to question ‘Will buying this … add meaning to my life?’ If not, I don’t do it or buy it.”
Neither Millburn nor Nicodemus suggests that people quit their jobs, give away their possessions and start living on the streets.
“Wealth doesn’t buy happiness, but neither does poverty,” Nicodemus says. “When you are content with what you have, with what you do, it allows you to connect with what’s important in your life. I was way too focused on the material things in my life. I didn’t know what was important anymore.”
Over the past four years Nicodemus and Millburn have both rediscovered what they truly value, and have been sharing it through their blog, website, essays and books. They say they have attracted more than 2 million followers.
“If you ask people what’s important to them, most will say friends, family, their health, but then see how they spend their time,” Nicodemus says. “If they’re at work, watching TV, on Facebook — make no mistake — that’s what their priorities are. … It’s important to know what you value in your life and make (those things) the priority.”
